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Each country has its own traditional, bizarre for other countries, festive dishes. In Russia, the New Year is not complete without Olivier, oven-baked meat and mayonnaise salads. In European countries, Christmas is a more significant holiday than the New Year, and therefore we will look at the top 10 countries and their traditional dishes on the Christmas table.
10 Italy
In Italy, they like to serve seafood on any holidays, but fried eel is considered traditional at Christmas, and on Christmas Eve you will definitely see this dish on the Italian table. Before frying, the eel is marinated and then sprinkled with spices.
As for other seafood, Italians love shellfish and crustaceans. They can be seen on the festive table either as an appetizer or as an addition to the main course – pasta.
The last traditional Italian dish is the stuffed baked rooster. The carcass is stuffed with minced pork, veal tenderloin, chestnuts and parmesan, and white wine is also served.
9. Costa Rica
For Christmas, Costa Ricans love to cook the so-called tamalitos. Various beans, beans, corn, cashew nuts and cayenne pepper are used to prepare this dish. Also traditional are mashed potatoes or cod soup.
For dessert, they like to serve rice with milk or coconut sweets.
8. Portugal
In Portugal, they always bake at Christmas. The most famous pastries are called “sonyush” (very similar to donuts we are used to) and rabanadash – this will remind you of Russian croutons, that is, slices of bread soaked in milk and eggs, and then fried in a pan.
But the most famous Christmas pastry in Portugal is a pie called Bolu Rei. It is a sweet cake decorated with raisins and fruits. Traditionally, edible surprises are hidden in it – beans. If you get a bean in a pie, then you will be happy in the coming year.
7. Denmark
On the Danish Christmas table you will see foods that are very familiar to a Russian person: duck, jelly, sausage, red cabbage, oranges, marinades, fruits, dried fruits and rice porridge.
Duck is traditionally baked with apples and served with a sauce of expensive port wine, broth, sugar, cream and duck fat. The people of Denmark are very fond of red cabbage salad with oranges. To prepare it, you just need to chop the cabbage, melt the duck fat in a pan, fry the cabbage in fat and add the juice and pulp of oranges. Salad ready!
6. United Kingdom
The main dish on the English Christmas table is roast goose or turkey. Served with small sausages wrapped in fried bacon. Smoked salmon with black bread and shrimp is used as an appetizer on the table.
Of course, stewed vegetables are traditionally on the table, including potatoes, parsnips, chestnuts, Brussels sprouts, and boiled carrots.
For dessert, puddings are preferred in this country. And homemade pudding takes four weeks to prepare! And at the stage of kneading cream and sugar, you can make a wish, the British believe that it will come true. Of course, it does not do without desires at the moment of eating: a coin is traditionally hidden in the pudding, but you need to be careful with inedible ingredients. They can still be swallowed or a tooth broken. It is for this reason that in Denmark beans are hidden in the pie, not coins.
5. Finland
In Finland, as in Denmark, they also love sweet rice porridge garnished with almonds and cinnamon. Also, the inhabitants of Finland love cabbage porridge, which is very easy to cook. You need to cook all the vegetables until completely softened, then add milk and spices. If desired, beat with a blender and the porridge is ready.
Cloudberry jam is preferred as a dessert in this country, and shanga, a fatty pork pie, is a serious dish in Finland. In Finland, they traditionally bake their own Christmas bread, and they also bake cookies with raisins and carrot casseroles.
As you can see, in Finland they love everything high-calorie and baked.
4. France
In France, roast goose is the main dish of the Christmas table. Seafood is an attribute of luxury on the table in France, which everyone aspires to. The French prefer oysters, black caviar with pancakes and lobsters.
Of course, on the French table you will find classic cheeses and traditional wine, moreover, a different one is served for each dish. After a hearty meal, the French move on to desserts. In this case, they cook charlotte or tangerine ice cream, like quince marshmallow, biscuits, nougat and candies with candied fruit.
3. Germany
It seems that all over Europe they like to serve roast goose for dinner, Germany is no exception. Moreover, each family has its own recipe for cooking poultry, they are similar only in that the fatter the goose, the tastier the result. A goose is baked with prunes and apples, and poured over with wine.
As a salad, the Germans prefer potato salad. It is based on coarsely chopped potatoes with additional ingredients, such as some marinades or onions.
Dessert is gingerbread with white icing. Strudel is also baked for the German table, but German housewives add nuts to the usual apples and raisins.
Homemade mulled wine is the main festive drink.
2. Greece
The main Greek dish is a baked pig and there are a lot of recipes for its preparation. They also love minced meat in Greece, which is mixed with rice and wrapped in a cabbage or grape leaf.
The main Greek dessert is shortbread, which in this country is called melomakarona. After baking, cookies are additionally soaked in syrup and sprinkled with nuts and cinnamon. Also in the kitchen, pancakes are traditionally fried, stuffed with jam or honey.
Greece also has its own traditional pie, called christopsomo, it is very similar to Russian Easter cake, but it does not have the glaze that is familiar to us.
1. Japan
Japanese cuisine, of course, is different from European or American. Instead of hot dishes in Japan, they prefer cold snacks: beans with rice, rice cakes and a large amount of vegetables.
On the festive table, there are always foods that, according to the Japanese, bring happiness. These are boiled fish, roasted chestnuts, sea kale and herring caviar.